News/Research

Conference Report: Molly Nicholas at Creativity and Cognition

09 Aug, 2022

Conference Report: Molly Nicholas at Creativity and Cognition

We're thrilled to support our students in sharing their research in the premiere conferences in their field. Molly Nicholas attended Creativity & Cognition in Venice, Italy, where she presented "Creative and Motivational Strategies Used by Expert Creative Practitioners, which won a Best Paper award. From Molly:

I'm thrilled to share the amazing experience we had sharing our research at the Creativity and Cognition conference in Italy. This conference represents a unique community, which -- like us -- is focused on a wide variety of fields including the humanities, social sciences, engineering, art, design, choreography, computer science, psychology, and education. The community embraces and values diverse forms of knowledge, and is especially dedicated to valuing craft and art practices across domains. We were honoured to join like-minded folks in exploring "how people engage individually and socially in creative processes" and especially in developing an understanding of "how computation and other technology can affect creative outcomes". Connecting with researchers across the world, all pursuing a deeper understanding of creativity, was inspiring and uplifting.

We enjoyed presenting our work, "Creative and Motivational Strategies Used by Expert Creative Practitioners" and chatting about creative practices with so many different expert researchers. Our research identified strategies used by expert creative practitioners across diverse fields such as performing, violin-making, augmented and virtual reality, computer programming, and more. We shared not only the four strategies we identified, but also how these strategies are connected to existing research in cognitive psychology, creativity research, and neuroscience. Discussing this work with so many experts in related fields has only launched us into even more excitement for next steps!

Read more about Molly here.